The music of the Departed is poppy, fun punk rock, but there's a dark undertone to the music and lyrics.

"We write stuff that affects our lives," says Michelle Lockneck, who is the lead singer and guitarist. Lockneck started directing music videos while she was earning her film degree. While working on other film projects, she realized that what she heard affected her more than what she was seeing as a filmmaker and viewer. She realized she had to be a musician.

"It was fun to film videos and shoot music videos through school, but I really wanted to perform," Lockneck says.

She recruited her friend Karina Figueroa to play bass and sing. At first they were in it for a laugh. "It started as a joke band, and we wrote really funny songs," Lockneck says.

When Lani Daggers and Nikki Stix, ex-drummer for the Husbands, joined the band, they took the Departed more seriously and hired a vocal coach to develop their voices. It doesn't go unnoticed, as their music and songs carry the driving rhythms of punk rock but have a lot of range and harmony.

"We all come from totally different musical backgrounds, and that's what makes the Departed what it is," Stix says. "I come from West Coast '80s punk rock, and Michelle is into more mainstream rock, like the Foo Fighters, and Lani, our guitar player, is a super rocker; she's into Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Our bass player, Karina, is more rockabilly; no, not rockabilly, but into bands like Social Distortion." Social Distortion has been described as punkabilly.

Stix is also half of the brains behind Punk Rock Sideshow on Mondays at the Hemlock.

"Me and my friend Scott started it because we both bartend Monday nights at the Hemlock and like three people would come in and he's old East Coast punk and I'm old West Coast punk so we were like, 'Why don't we just start bringing our own records in here and playing them and it'll give us something to do,' and it just kind of blossomed to this thing where it is now, where we have to hire extra people on Mondays because it's so busy and we try to do early shows every once in a while and we try to do early free shows the first of every month."

On July 16 Punk Rock Sideshow hosted a benefit for the 17-year-old drummer of Tinkture, Roisin Isner, who was severely injured by fireworks at Dolores Park. Isner doesn't have health insurance, and Punk Rock Sideshow raised more than $4,300 to help cover her medical bills.